


Fly Away

by Nununununu



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, Feelings, Other, Sad with a Happy Ending, Some things even Venom can't fix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2021-01-31 12:02:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21445894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nununununu/pseuds/Nununununu
Summary: A door closes.
Relationships: Eddie Brock/Venom Symbiote
Comments: 17
Kudos: 88





	Fly Away

**Author's Note:**

> Happy ending in a sense, but **trigger warning** for that major character death. Eddie suffers a major stroke without warning and ends up in a coma. Venom is left to deal with the consequences.
> 
> Almost my entire medical knowledge comes from the internet; a bit hand wavy in places also as Venom isn't in a position to really understand what's going on. 
> 
> A more personal fic than usual and not part of Kinktober; slightly edited.
> 
> Song for this fic for extra sadness: [It Doesn't Matter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bF3CTOqifew) by Alison Krauss & Union Station (I totally forgot this was on Buffy XD).
> 
> _"You've been in a cage  
Throw you to the wind you fly away."_

In the end, they only get nine years together. To be precise, nine years, two months, three days, fourteen hours and fifty-three minutes. It sounds like a lot, put like that – all those numbers.

It isn’t.

\--

It happens so suddenly Venom is powerless to stop it.

Eddie is holding them small and round in his cupped hands, his half of the bond warm with good humour and affection. He’s part way through a sentence –

“Oh Vee, you know I’ve always meant to tell you that –”

Dizziness slams into them both sickeningly as Eddie’s vision goes blurry, his breath catching.

“_H-hunh_ –” He makes a broken sort of noise they’ve never heard him make before.

**_Eddie?!_** Something –

Something _very_ wrong is happening in Eddie’s brain.

**_What –? _**Panic striking them, Venom rushes all of the parts of them inside Eddie up into his head, desperate to identify and repair the damage. It’s something – something about his blood flow –

** _Why – W-what’s happening? What the fuck?!_ **

This shouldn’t be possible!

“_Ven- Ve–_” Eddie’s struggling, fear lancing through him, his head hurting, his face hurting on one side. He’s shaking. Panic floods through him likewise, mingling with and amplifying Venom’s.

**_We’ll – we’ll fix it, Eddie! We’ll be okay! You’ll – _**Aghast, trembling harder than they ever have, more afraid than they’ve ever been, Venom battles to repair what’s gone wrong – straining, fighting, racing to mend everything that’s shattering so fast and completely without warning –

It’s faster than they are.

** _No! No –!_ **

This _should not be fucking possibl_e.

“_V _–” Eddie’s arm goes numb. He drops the part of Venom he’s holding.

He falls on the floor.

** _Eddie –! Eddie!_ **

Eddie’s not all right, not in the slightest. Venom –

Venom _can’t fix it_.

**Eddie!**

His mind goes dark.

This is the point where Venom starts screaming.

\--

They regain consciousness into a nightmare.

Eddie does not.

** _e-eddie?_ **

There’s no answer. No sense of Eddie. His side of their bond –

Dark. Nothing.

A shut door.

Venom can’t see anything. Can’t feel anything beyond the unsteady thump of Eddie’s heart – wrong. The flow of his blood – wrong. The sense of numbness that pervades everything. The feeling of his body, horizontal, unmoving.

Wrong.

There is beeping – muffled but rhythmic. It hurts them. Everything hurts them. Where is Eddie? Why has he left them? What happened?

Why couldn’t they heal him?

_What the fuck did they do wrong?!_

Venom slowly – slowly – comes to realise they are in a hospital. Eddie is lying in a hospital bed, hooked up to machines. People come occasionally to check up on him. Their voices muffled, like the beeping.

It still hurts them.

Everything hurts them.

Eddie is still missing. Venom doesn’t understand.

Venom failed.

This is all their fault.

This is all their fault.

This is all their fault.

\--

“Ve –”

Someone is talking to them.

“Can you –”

It’s not Eddie.

“Can you hear me?”

There’s a hand on Eddie’s hand. Eddie can’t feel it. His side of the bond is still –

Dark. Nothing. A shut door.

Venom is curled tiny and terrified inside their beloved human’s battered heart. Still, the touch on Eddie’s hand rouses them in a way nothing else has. Something about that voice reaching them.

“Eddie, if you’re in there – let me know? You – you _must still be in there_.”

Pain in that voice. Pain like Venom is in. Pain and distress and –

Venom _knows_ this person.

“Venom, you’re in there, right? Come on, don’t give up! Don’t either of you dare give up! Give me a sign!”

Silence for some time.

Then,

“Anything. _Come on_. Anything at all.”

Venom –

Venom _wants_ to. They long to answer that voice calling them. They refuse –

They _refuse_ to think of Eddie’s body as a prison. But it doesn’t want to let them do anything.

It doesn’t let them respond.

“Venom! Edward Charles Allan Brock! Don’t – _Don’t you do this! Don’t either of you fucking do this, you bastards!_”

Fuck, Venom longs to answer. For _Eddie _to answer that voice.

** _eddie?_ **

They would give anything just for any sign of response from him. _Anything_.

Anything at all.

** _eddie. _** **please.**

“Eddie, _please_ –”

Anne.

\--

Anne comes again, many times. Dan, too.

Venom can't keep track. They’re losing large portions of their knowledge of language without Eddie. Losing the ability to count; to understand the passing of time. Unable to think of anything except that awful terror Eddie felt as the stroke ravaged his mind and body. Unable to remember anything beyond that unfinished sentence, that way all the warm fondness and care guttered out, so swiftly extinguished.

They wait, lost in the darkness inside him, slowly starving.

If Eddie is gone to them –

If he is gone to them forever –

Part of Venom hasn’t stopped screaming since it first happened; part of them will never stop. Hunger worse than anything they have ever known tearing at them, stabbing at them, shredding them viciously.

It’s nothing, _nothing_ compared to the pain of the silence from Eddie’s side of their bond.

That shut door. Venom pushes at it. Shoves at it, straining to force it open. Crying, crying out frantically –

** _eddie!_ **

There’s never any answer. They feel like they’re spiralling into madness.

** _please –_ **

\--

They ache for him.

They long for him.

They love him.

They wish they knew what Eddie had been going to say.

\--

Dan sits down with them, while they’re still just about able to understand him.

“Venom,” His voice is carefully even. He rests his hand on Eddie’s, in the same place that Anne touched. Eddie’s knuckles stand out too much beneath the skin. His fingers dry and crooked, like twigs.

Venom is exhausted. More worn out than they’ve ever been, but still unable to rest. Unable to sleep. Only able to hurt and hurt and hurt –

“Eddie, if you’re in there and able to hear what I’m saying, I believe you’ll forgive me. That you’ll understand what I’m about to say and agree with this offer Anne and I would like to make.”

Dan pauses. The constant muffled beeping does not.

“Venom, if you’re able to – if you would like to – although please know that we completely understand if you choose not to –”

It’s unusual to hear Dan falter. There’s another voice speaking, addressing him softly. Anne.

Dan tries again, “Venom, Anne and I are both willing to be your host, either one of us. Will you – at least consider it, if you can? We believe Eddie would want that. For you to – carry on.”

There’s a second touch to Eddie’s body – Anne leaning in closer, her fingers grazing his brittle wrist.

“Eddie, hey. It’s me. You told me all that time ago, didn’t you. If something happened and the two of you ended up separated – ‘_look after Vee_’. Venom, I know you won’t want to be parted from Eddie, but –”

** _no._ **

Venom reaches out towards her with all their remaining strength. There’s no doubt about it whatsoever, no need to ask if they 'can': they absolutely _do not_ want to be parted from Eddie. They refuse to be parted from him. Eddie may –

Eddie may. Be lost. But.

But they are staying with him as very long as they can all the same.

“V-Venom?” Anne starts, chokes on a gasp. An unpleasant screech – a chair being shoved back as she stands. Pain and incredulity and – and an awful spark of _hope_ in her voice. “Venom, oh my god – that was you, wasn’t it?! You said ‘no’!”

She –

She heard them? Shuddering hard with the effort it took to communicate, Venom mentally pants.

Anne is clinging to Eddie’s hand, mentally clawing for them in return, the first human other than Eddie to ever do their utmost to bond.

“Ven-Venom – please –” Her eyes are closed, Venom senses that. Senses her desperation, her fear – that horrible, horrible hope.

“Please –” She’s whispering, “Eddie. He’s – he’s in there with you, right? He’s okay? I mean,” She laughs in a way that isn’t a laugh at all. Dan is now the one to say something in the background, low words of support. “I mean, obviously nothing is okay. But you’re in there, and Eddie –”

Venom can’t stand this.

** _no._ **

It takes almost more than they can manage to respond this second time. That hope dying, Anne crumples.

“Oh _god_. Oh _fuck_. ‘No’ – Eddie. _Eddie’s not there_ –” She drags in a ragged breath, forces herself back up. “Right. Right. So that’s how it is. But you, Venom – you’re – obviously not okay. But – will you?”

For all that they’re failing, Venom knows what she means.

** _no._ **

“O–” Anne isn’t at all surprised by their answer to the offer to bond. To leave Eddie. She still pauses, struggling to swallow. “Okay. Of course. We do understand.”

She bows over to rest her head against Eddie’s bony wrist, Dan’s hand on her shoulder. Her voice a whisper as she speaks next.

“We love you both.”

** _thank you._ **

It takes the last fragment of language they have, their last speck of comprehension to reply. Venom cannibalises everything they can of their miniscule remaining self in order to produce these last words.

** _goodbye._ **

** _\--_ **

And then there is nothing, for a long time.

\--

A door opens.

_V–_

_Vee?_

_Oh Vee, thank god! Thank fuck, thank fucking fuck you're all right – I was so scared I lost you somehow. I’ve been looking for you everywhere, love. _

_I was right in the middle of telling you –_

Fin.


End file.
